Gamertell Review: Dawn’s Light for PC

Title: Dawn’s Light
Price: $19.95
System(s): Windows 98, XP and Vista PC
Release Date: September 29, 2009
Publisher (Developer): John Wizard Games (John Wizard Games)
ESRB Rating: N/A. I’d say it’s appropriate for ages 13+, since there’s some violence and a few dark situations.
Pros: Fantastic and funny script. Character portraits, sprites and monsters are well drawn. Pleasant music score. Can fish for fun. Quite a few outfits to earn. Incentives for destroying all monsters in dungeons. Quick customer service from John Wizard Games if there’s an issue. No random encounters. Interesting characters, both playable and NPC.
Cons: Only 4 save slots. Options reset once you quit the game. Tutorial could have mentioned options menu. Marketing/publicity could have been better.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up, 94/100, A, * * * * out of 5

I’m going to start by being brutally honest – when I first saw the John Wizard Games site for Dawn’s Light, with the initial screenshots and trailer, I wasn’t all that impressed. Indie RPGs can tend to look the same after a while, and the way everything was presented, I was thinking it was going to be just like the others. I had no idea that it would end up being one of the best PC games I’d play all year. John Wizard Games’ first title guides players along a long and memorable adventure.

A mysterious, masked man comes and takes nearly everything away.

Life starts out kinda sweet for Harvey. He and his brother, Victor, live on an island with their beloved Grandad. Then, one day, someone invades their personal paradise. Grandad tells Harvey to hide inside the house while he finds Victor. Unfortunately Mordecai, a masked man with a yet unknown agenda, discovers Victor first. Mordecai claims Victor is the key to something and kidnaps him. Grandad realizes Harvey isn’t safe there, and takes him to another island where he leaves him at an orphanage in the care of a nun named Tracey.

Seven years later, and things are once again going pretty well for Harvey. He’s found a pleasant enough life on the island, with its 11 other inhabitants. He’s come of age, and is looking for something to do. Tracey gives him a journal to write his accomplishments in, which gets Harvey looking for quests. After finding all of a friend’s lost frogs, he decides to secretly take on a quest to recover sheep from monsters despite being told not to because of the potential danger. While he’s away, Mordecai comes to the island looking for him. The villagers cover for Harvey and say he isn’t there. Harvey returns to find Mordecai gone and all of the villagers dead. With his dying breath John, whose sheep Harvey was rescuing, tells Harvey to go to his Grandad for answers.

So Harvey does. There, he learns that Grandad isn’t really related to Victor and him – he just took the two in after his own family and their own parents were killed. He reveals Mordecai is behind everything. Harvey swears revenge and then sets out on a journey to defeat the masked man. Along the way, he’ll be joined by friends like Vera and Lord Adolin Swordhand: Cryer of Tears and get drawn into a fight to save the world.

Looks familiar but stands out because of it’s writing and extras.

It’s striking how many things Dawn’s Light does right. It has a well written script, great looking enemies, good character portraits, background music that doesn’t make you reach for the mute button, lots of areas to explore, incentives for completely exploring dungeons, adorable costumes characters can don (If only they affected stats/skills too!), challenging battles that can make you think, puzzles to solve and lots of quests and side quests to undertake. Everytime I’d visit a town or dungeon, I’d backtrack to explore one more time, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

The one thing that truly makes Dawn’s Light exceptional and memorable is the funny, clever and well-written script. It is the quality of something I would expect from an Atlus console or handheld release. It’s as though the writer recognized that Harvey’s quest was somewhat cliched – a young man seeking revenge for his brother’s abduction and the death of the innocent people who raised him, then finding out the man behind it is out to possibly destroy the world, and used humor and wit to make Dawn’s Light stand out. This is one of those games where you want to check everything Harvey could, look at every item description and talk to every NPC, because otherwise you could miss something awesome. It’s a wonderful thing, considering how many games (indie or major) have scripts that are uninspired and riddled with errors.

If there’s one thing that I could say truly fails about Dawn’s Light, it’s the marketing and publicity for the game. This title has a wonderfully funny script, something that could, and should, have been showcased in screenshots. It also used only one sentence to state the storyline, making no mention of why Harvey is seeking revenge, and against who. Probably the only thing the marketing did right was show the journal in both the trailer and screenshots – it’s the only clear indication of just how much there is to do and enjoy in the game. It deserves much more attention.

A hidden gem among indie RPGs

It may only be October, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dawn’s Light is the best independent RPG of 2009. It’s so good that I wish it were possible to see a DS or WiiWare port of it. Dawn’s Light‘s greatest point is the wonderful script and writing, but that’s only part of what makes this game so wonderful. All of the extra details, like the many side quests and extra achievements players can accomplish, culminate to create this fantastic game. It’s the sort of game that you find yourself replaying, just because you enjoyed it so much the first time around. If this is any indication of the caliber of games John Wizard Games is going to be creating, it is going to be a developer to closely watch.

Site [Dawn's Light]